31 December Prompts Challenge, FMA-Style
by StellatheAlchemist
Summary: Just what the title says. A series of December-themed prompts used to write a collection of FMA short stories, one per day. Most will be during the manga/Brotherhood, but some will be post-manga and a few might even be pre-manga. Not sure about pairings yet, but if there are any it'll be EdWin, Royai or LingFan. Rated K plus because Ed is a pottymouth.
1. Day 01

**((So, I'm going to be doing this challenge thing for December. Basically you get one winter/holidays themed prompt per day, and you have to write a short story to fit that theme every day using a chosen universe or whatever. So of course I'm doing FMA. xD I'll hopefully have one new story up each day.))  
((Today was... special. I had little motivation and writer's block, in the end I just kind of made stuff up... Hence the strange ending. Sorry about that, everyone! Hopefully it won't happen again. .))**

_Day 01_

_Prompt: Sweaters_

_Setting: Fort Briggs, during manga_

If there was one thing Ed had learned about Briggs in the short time he had been there, it was that it was cold. Really, really cold. There had been some cold winters back in Risembool, but being in Briggs was like being in a giant freezer. He shivered and pulled his jacket tighter around him. Had he pulled it any tighter than that, it would have torn. He was annoyed to find that it didn't make him any warmer.

"Are you ok, Brother?" Al asked concernedly, looking up from the book he was reading.

"No, I am not ok! I'm freezing my ass off!" Ed complained. He poked the guard standing outside their cell. "Hey, can't you turn the heat up or something?"

"No, but if you ask nicely I MIGHT get you a sweater," the guard replied, annoyed at Ed's rudeness.

"...Please?" Ed tried hopefully. The guard sighed. He did feel bad for the kid; Briggs was a tough place, and the climate wasn't for everyone, especially not those from the warm and sunny eastern region.

"All right, kid. But don't think it's free."

Ed's face brightened a little as the guard went to go get him a sweater, although not for long because he sneezed. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and sniffled, wishing he would just magically get warmer. Luckily for him, the guard returned and threw the sweater at him, hitting him right in the face. He pulled it off and looked at it, only to discover that it was a bit... special.

"...It's ugly," he observed unhappily.

"Do you want to get warm or not?" the guard retorted. Ed thought it over for a few seconds and reluctantly pulled it on.

It was an odd shade of coppery orange, with puke-green snowflakes and eggplant purple accents. Whoever had made it was clearly either horribly colorblind, pure evil, or both. It was also terribly itchy, and smelled like cat pee. However, it was warm, so Ed reluctantly put up with it.

Even though nearly everyone who walked by laughed at him, he put up with it, because he'd rather be ridiculed than cold. And also because he could get his revenge later, but mostly just because he was cold. He learned an important lesson that day: If you wear an ugly sweater, people WILL make fun of you. Except Al, because he's some sort of magical fairy princess with no bad qualities.


	2. Day 03

**((Finally managed to write something decent-ish. It's still not that great, but after everything that happened yesterday, I really don't care. There was a bit of an incident involving an evil, evil media organizer that apparently decided to steal all my romanji-encoded UTAUloids' wav files, and after going through a lot of ridiculously complicated crap to figure out what was wrong and fix it, Aiko and Teto's otos have reset themselves. *Headdesk* So I'm really not in the mood to care about my writing. And yes, I did skip day 2... Sorry everyone. I'll try to do better tomorrow. ._.'))**

_Day 03_

_Prompt: Hot cocoa/hot drinks_

_Setting: East City, during the manga_

It was a nasty winter in East City, the coldest on record since 1891. Ed shivered involuntarily as he dropped his pen for the third time in the past five minutes. He swore as he bent over to pick it up, only to have it slip out of his fingers repeatedly. It rolled under the colonel's desk, making Ed even more angry.

"What the hell are you doing, Ed?" asked Roy, staring at the teenager who now had half his arm stuck under the desk and was yelling insults at an inanimate object.

"My stupid pen rolled under your stupid desk, and now I can't get it out!" Ed shouted, flailing around in his attempt to get his arm to go even further under the desk.

"Why, are your arms too short?" Mustang smirked and reached under the desk, retrieving the offending writing instrument.

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SMALL HE'D GET CRUSHED BY A SNOWFLAKE?!" Ed demanded, glaring at the colonel.

"Seriously though, why do you keep dropping your pen?"

"Because my hand is cold," Ed mumbled. "I can't get a grip on the stupid thing because my fingers are frozen stiff."

Before Roy could reply, he was interrupted by a loud ding. Suddenly all his subordinates rushed over to the coffee pot, eager to get a cup of the dark drink inside it.

"I call the first cup!"

"No way! I was here first!"

"All of you be quiet," snapped lieutenant Hawkeye, pointing her gun at the group of people who were all fighting to get the first cup. "_I_ will pour the drinks," she finished, calmly but firmly. They all quickly moved out of the way, knowing better than to argue with the lieutenant. She carefully poured the first cup and gave it to Ed.

"Thanks," he said, and wrapped his cold fingers around it gratefully. He held it for a few minutes, letting the heat of the cup warm up his hands. Once it was cool enough, he drank it all quickly. It wasn't the best, but considering how cold it was, he would have drunk anything as long as it was warm. Everyone else seemed to like it, too. Sometimes a nice warm drink could work miracles.


	3. Day 04

**((This one is pretty short, and mostly dialogue. I got lazy and didn't give it a real ending. xD Oh well.))**

_Day 04_

_Prompt: Books_

_Setting: Risembool, pre-manga_

Edward Elric was surrounded by books.

So many books, you could probably build a house out of them if you tried. There were big books, small books, fancy books, hardcover books, paperback books, books that seemed to have been stolen from a library, books that looked hundreds of years old... The entire room was filled with books, all piled around two young boys. The Elric brothers had decided to go through their dad's old books, in the hopes of finding which ones could be useful. This involved taking all the books out of every bookcase in the house and sorting them.

"Damn it, why are all these stupid books so useless?!" Ed angrily threw the book in his hands to its proper place, causing several stacks of books to fall on Al.

"Geez, now we have to go through all those again," Al complained, rubbing his head. He sighed and started carefully rearranging the fallen books, and wondered why Ed had to be so violent all the time.

"This is pointless! None of these have anything useful!" Ed continued.

"That's not true, Brother. We found plenty of useful books, remember?" Al pointed out, still cleaning up the others.

"Yeah, FOUR!"

"Eleven."

"SAME THING!"

Al rolled his eyes and picked up a book from the floor. "If you would just pay more attention-"

"I AM PAYING ATTENTION!" Ed snapped. A pile of books fell on him. "OH, TO HELL WITH THESE STUPID BOOKS!"


	4. Day 05

**((...I really do suck at endings. xD Not much else to say about this one, really...))**

_Day 05_

_Prompt: Ice skating_

_Setting: Risembool, pre-manga_

Many people would have thought that trying to teach a four-year-old to ice skate was a crazy and near impossible idea. Trisha Elric, however, saw nothing wrong with it, even if said four-year-old kept falling on his butt.

"It's too hard, mommy, I don't think I can do it," the little boy said, not even trying to get up. He felt terrible for disappointing his mother, but he was ready to give up.

"Come on, Al, it's easy. Look, Ed's got it," Trisha said, pointing. Sure enough, the older boy was skating in circles around the pond, having little trouble. He had gotten the hang of it quite quickly.

"But I keep falling over..."

"Here," she said, taking his tiny hand in her own, "I'll help you."

Al shakily stood up, using Trisha to steady himself, and attempted to stop wobbling. Trisha smiled and slowly led him around the pond, taking care not to go too fast for him.

"See? There you go. It's not so hard, right?"

"Y-yeah, I guess so," he replied hesitantly. She was right, though; He was doing better, and didn't even notice when she carefully let go of his hand. Trisha watched him skate for a moment, until Ed crashed into him and sent them both sliding into a snow bank. She sighed. Boys.


End file.
